I couldn’t now imagine life without the cycle of looking after the trees and then seeing the fruits of all our labour; this wonderful, fresh, peppery, green oil. This is the third year that we have completed the...

I was standing in a group of men, a dozen or so, watching, in an off-hand way, a pot of mutton stew cooking. It was a massive pot, 11 kilos of meat, slowly stewing over an open fire, high in the hills of Abruzzo, outside a mountain refuge for climbers.

I was enjoying a coffee in a local bar when Nino (not his real name) approached me; in a hushed tone, careful that we would not be overheard, he asked me if I was free later that day and interested in going truffle hunting with him.

The olive harvest has just finished. Not a good harvest, as the yield was too low, but the quality is excellent and prices have risen to their highest level ever, so there is a sense of buoyancy from the farmers. What they lost in overall production they have partially...

In Italy it is time to celebrate the tomato harvest, and what tomatoes they are: gnarled and misshapen they may be, but a joy to eat! Why can’t we get tomatoes like these in the UK; instead of the tasteless, insipid, watery, but perfectly formed and uniformly round red...

Chianti, Prosecco, Brunello – Italy has always been synonymous with world-famous wine, but craft beer? Sure…a Moretti is acceptable on a hot summer’s day but I bet my bottom euro that I’m not alone in associating Italian beer with mass-produced, characterless - and exp...

Marion and I were out for a quiet dinner together last week. We went to one of our favourite places in Bristol to try out a new restaurant that we had heard good things about in Wapping Wharf, an area I love not just because it is a vibrant part of the old dockland but...

Polenta was once a staple throughout Italy until it was replaced by pasta in the early 20th century. This hearty-carb was the mainstay of a peasant diet, supplemented with bits of meat and vegetables to complete the meal.